The United States Federal Court offers attorneys, creditors, trustees and other non-individual parties filing actions in connection with Federal Court cases a mechanism to electronically enter their pleadings and other notices (herein referred to as “filings”) to a case docket. This mechanism is called the CM/ECF (Case Management/Electronic Case Filing) system which offers an electronic web-based portal that is available to authorized parties in each Appellate Court, Federal Court, and Bankruptcy Court district. CM/ECF enables authorized parties to make filings via the Internet by uploading the pleading or other filing, with supporting attachments when appropriate, in Adobe® PDF (Portable Document Format), and by paying for the filing using a credit card (or, in some districts, through electronic check).
Many users of the CM/ECF system use proprietary or generally available office automation systems that have been suitably customized to prepare Federal Court filings. In some cases, the completed pleading to be filed is produced in hard copy and then scanned and converted to PDF, along with supporting attachments, in order to make the filing compatible with the CM/ECF web portal filing submission process and requirements. In other cases, the particular office automation program that is utilized has integrated PDF formatting functionalities which allow the pleading/filing to be saved in PDF format directly from the filer's system in which it is created.
While the CM/ECF system supports substantial utility for its users, it is not configured to enable any widespread system-to-system automation for the submission of filings as the web portal is arranged to only facilitate the separate and individual entry of each filing. The CM/ECF system can be supplemented by an available fixed-record-length batch system for claim-related submissions (e.g., Proof of Claim, Transfers of Claim, etc.) but such claims-related activities do not make up the bulk of CM/ECF filings. Overall, utilization of the currently available electronic facilities can typically be expected to consume a significant amount of resources at law firms, creditors, and other parties who need to handle a large volume of filings.